4 years old and surfing etsy!

So while I was at home on vacation I showed my nephew who is 4 1/2 etsy. Well he loved the "smashed animals" store called Nothinglikeit.etsy.com they are on summer break but he enjoyed surfing the sold items. He was pretty good at surfing the site without help, never to young to start right?!?!?

He totally wants a smashed fish :)

http://nothing-like-it.blogspot.com/

Marketing to a famous person

Few more days of vacation left for me then it is back to the 9-5 job.

About 1.5 years ago I worked up a big marketing package of my candles and soap which I sent to Kat Von D of the LA Ink show. See the advantage of living in Hollywood is that there are a number of famous people around me that I can send things to.

These are the pictures of what I basically sent. I made up a tool box filled with 3 candles(the blue one was for the messenger who took the package to Kat), tons of soaps and some aroma ornies. I also included what is called a leave behind(bottom picture) which is basically a handmade photo catalog of my work. Never got a call back but it was worth a try right?!!?

Whipped Body Frosting

So yes I am on vacation until July 26 but I do have a few things to blog about while I am away from home and soap making.

Today I am going to talk about a recent Etsy purchase I made from http://verbenacustomblends.etsy.com/

I went on a search for some new face cream I spent some time looking at all the ingredients people used to make the creams and it lead me to Verbena Custom Blends.

I ended up selecting this face cream and while I was in the shop I was really digging the whipped body frosting. This shop does some of the best scent combos and will even make whatever scent you want. I decided on one that smelled like Marshmallow, Coconut, Butter cream cupcake mine was custom blend to include all ofthe scents I love.

I have to say I love love that whipped body frosting I smell so good when I wear it. I ended up using some of my soap money to buy 2 more for treat presents for my mother and sister who live in Colorado. My mom selected Buttery Toffee Carmel and my sister picked Cherry Almond Coconut which I have to say smelled really good as well. Both packages came with lots of great samples for soap and the yogurt whipped body creams.

This is a great find on Etsy and I know I will be back once I get my stuff all used up. Make sure you all stop by and check it out!

soaps for the kids

So I am going on vacation next Saturday so I have been working on making soaps for my two nephews and my neice(all 4 and under). Used the idea from The Soap Queens video and made some other kid friendly soaps. The kids sure do love fun soaps like these and I think it will help Aunt Misty score some points :)

The Story of Cherry Cola soap

Thought I would talk some about my Cherry Cola soap today. I went to the Bitter Creek convention 1 year ago and they had up a table with every scent they carry. I spent a good deal of time there smelling all of them and the minute I hit the Cherry Cola I was blown away by how great it was. As soon as I got home from the convention I placed an order because I had to have that scent.

I decided to make it into some soap see top picture, well I couldn't seem to sell any in that scent which was odd since it is so good. Well turns out that it was just because the picture was so bad most people didn't even pay attention to it the top picture is one of the early ones of the soap and still a better picture then what I had up for a long time. I also noticed that over time the soap changed colors and the lines got softer as the second picture is still the same soap as the first picture. When I posted the updated picture(pic 2) all of a sudden people were taking notice of this great scent and by picture 3 update it is fast becoming a top seller.

Well I am down to my last 2 bars so it was time to make a fresh batch again. 4th picture is the batch I made this weekend, I used the same colors as the first batch and once again it is similar to the coloring of the first picture. So maybe this soap is like wine and it gets better and better colors with time?!?! Will be interesting to see if this one changes to a more purple color with soft lines.

PS I learned that it really pays to have good pictures!

mess up batch round 2

Top picture is the after, bottom is the before picture

So if you remember a few posts back I cut a loaf of soap before it was set and I only had about 1 bar that looked good. Here is my attempt at giving that batch a new life. I do have to say melt and pour soap is much easier to fix problems with then the cold process soap.

Scented with Energy, Red Apple, Cranberry Sweet, Cranberry Fig

new soap mold testing

So I got a new soap mold and I tested out ways to make it look even cooler. Most people I notice with these kind of molds just pour one solid pastel color and call it good but that won't work for me so I am on a mission to kick it up to the next level.

So round one (left to right) I tried clear pink melt and pour mixed with some white solid melt and pour soap with a pink solid base. Next up was pink flowers with a white background which was better but still not it exactly. So I tried white flowers and I put a tad less in to coat so it might show the base color more then I did a darker base and that sure looked a ton better. Last round I did blue clear melt and pour with a white solid base but it really didn't pop like the one before. I still have a few more ideas I want to test but I am getting closer to what I want them to look like.